Recognizing this, YouTube Go combines clever video compression tech to give even those with the worst connections fairly solid and reliable streaming. Like with the western mobile app, Go allows viewers to download videos in different qualities in order to reduce users’ bandwidth, even showing users the data demands of streaming each video. Following in the footsteps of Google Maps offline, YouTube Go has also been designed to function without an internet connection, allowing users to save videos that infinitely improve their commute and even share their favourite clips over Bluetooth.

While a launch date for the full app has yet to be announced, you can download YouTube Go’s beta app from the Indian Google Play Store now. The tech company will also be holding events in Udaipur “over the coming weeks” to glean info on how users have been interacting with the app. The timing couldn’t have been better, as now Indian viewers can rest comfortably knowing that wherever they are – they’ll be able to catch Coachella.

Alcatel has now silently introduced their most innovative smartphone till date. The new product from Alcatel is the Alcatel Flash.

It has some basic hardware specifications like other mid range smartphones currently available. What sets it apart from others is it’s camera. The Alcatel Flash comes with a 13MP + 13MP of dual rear camera setup which has dual 6P lens. Both the camera sensors have an aperture size of f/2.0 .  It also comes with dual tone LED flash and closed loop PDAF. Out of which one is monochrome and another is RGB.

On the front also it gets a dual Camera setup. There is an 8MP + 5MP sensor combination. The front camera of Alcatel Flash also gets 6 piece lenses with f/2.0 aperture. It has got dual tone LED Flash on the front and has closed loop PDAF like the rear camera.

Other specifications include a 5.5-inch 1080p IPS display. There is 3GB of RAM in Alcatel Flash. Internal storage coming with Alcatel Flash is 32GB which can be expanded using a micro SD card. The smartphone is powered by a Deca-Core MediaTek Helio X20 MT6797 SoC at a frequency of 2.3GHz. The Alcatel Flash comes with 3100mAh battery and has a fingerprint scanner located at the back.

Specifications:

• 5.5-inch full HD (1920 x 1080p) IPS display


• Dragontrail Glass, Fingerprint-resistant


• Oleophobic coating


• 3GB of RAM


• 32GB of internal storage with micro SD card slot


• 2.3GHz Deca-Core MediaTek Helio X20 MT6797 SoC


• 13MP(Monochrome) + 13MP(RGB) dual rear camera setup with dual 6P lens, f/2.0 aperture, dual tone LED flash and closed loop PDAF, 4K video support


• 8MP + 5MP of dual camera setup on the front with dual 6P lens, f/2.0 aperture, dual tone LED flash and closed loop PDAF


• Android Marshmallow


• Dimensions :- 152.6×75.4×8.7mm


• Weight:- 155gms


• USB Type-C


• 4G VoLTE, WiFi, Bluetooth v4.1, GPS


• 3100mAh battery

Price & Release date:

The Alcatel Flash comes in Titanium Grey colour only. Currently there isn’t any information available about the availability of it.

After releasing a refreshed app for Windows Phone with new Windows 10 design few days ago, Telegram is back with another good news. The classic win32 app is now downloadable from the Windows Store. That means, easier install/uninstall and faster delivery of updates, new features. All of this has been possible with the Desktop App Converter tool.

And we shouldn’t forget, this move will give Telegram access to the hundreds, if not thousands, of Windows 10 APIs to light up features like Live tiles, Cortana integration, interactive toasts etc.

Here are some of the major highlights of the Telegram Desktop app;

• Fast: Telegram is the fastest messaging app on the market because it uses a distributed infrastructure with data centers positioned around the globe to connect users to the closest possible server.


• Secure: We made it our mission to provide the best security among mass messengers. Telegram heavily encrypts all your data with time-tested algorithms.


• Cloud Storage: Telegram seamlessly syncs across all your devices, so you can always securely access your data. Your message history is stored for free in the Telegram cloud. Never lose your data again!


• Group Chat & Sharing: With Telegram, you can form large group chats of up to 200 members, send broadcasts to up to 100 contacts at a time, quickly share large videos, documents (.doc, .ppt, .zip, etc.), and send an unlimited amount of photos to your friends.


• Reliable: Built to deliver your messages in the minimum bytes possible, Telegram is the most reliable messaging system ever made. It works even on the weakest mobile connections.


• 100% free and no ads: Telegram is free and will always be free. We are not going to sell ads or introduce subscription fees.


• Privacy: We take your privacy seriously and will never give third parties access to your data.

You can download the app from the Windows Store by following the link below.

Digital sales and physical shipments of action-RPG sequel from Square Enix and Platinum Games hits milestone in just over a month

This is a News In Brief article. Read more about this story by following the link below:

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Finally coming to the pet tech space this summer: an app-controlled cat door that will tell you when your pet has left the building. RIP privacy for pets!

UK firm SureFlap, which already makes a range of microchipped-enabled pet products such as feeders and pet doors which only open for the correctly chipped (or RFID-collared) pet, reckons pet owners are hankering for even more remote-control options with their high tech pet kit — ergo, they’ve announced an app-controlled version of their microchipped pet door will go on sale this summer.

The forthcoming Microchip Pet Door Connect will have a companion app that enables pet owners to remotely lock or unlock the door from anywhere, and also schedule curfew times to keep their pets in at a specified time of day.

Owners will also be able to receive notifications via the app when their pet leaves or enters the house, and the app will log and track these comings and goings over time — offering a potential route to flag up changes in behavior.

Access to the app can also be shared with others, such as a pet sitter.

SureFlap is using the Xively platform for the connectivity layer for this, its debut IoT device — and says it will be launching a range of connected products this year.

The pet door is designed for use by cats and/or small dogs. It’s priced at £119.99 for the pet door and £49.99 for the hub — or £159.99 for both.

A minimum 1Mbps home broadband connection is required for the pet door to function, plus a spare Ethernet port to plug in the Hub device (pictured above next to the pet door).

The pet door is powered by 4 x C batteries — with typical battery life being more than six months “in most cases”, and up to a year with “normal use”.

SureFlap says it’s using industry standard encryption scheme TLS for the device, with all public facing servers load balanced through AWS’s ELB service to protect their IP addresses. Comms between the pet door and the hub are also encrypted, it adds.

Existing users of SureFlap pet doors won’t be able to use the app as its earlier products don’t include the necessary comms module but the company tells us they will offer these customers an upgrade option.

Lego City Undercover was certainly a bright spot in the Wii U’s library, bringing fun, open world gameplay to the classic Lego template. Still, it wasn’t a perfect game by any means, and one aspect that received universal negativity was the positively heinous load times that continuously plagued it. Essentially, if you re-entered the overworld map from an interior area, you’d be faced with over a minute of staring at a loading screen, and this obviously got old pretty quick.

Many were hoping that the Switch port, then, would cut these load times down, seeing as how the hardware is more powerful this time around and the developers have hopefully had more time to optimize it. Unfortunately, the reality is rather disappointing. While the load times have been cut somewhat, it’s really more of a change from “terrible” to “bad”. Here’s a video comparison:

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What do you think? Does this change your mind on the Switch port? Why do you think the load times are still this bad? Drop us a comment in the section below.

Blackstorm Labs, a startup that’s working to build technology that brings developers tools to get out games and apps more quickly through HTML5, today said it is working with Rakuten to build a new entity called R Games that will serve as a hub for games in Japan and Asia.

Blackstorm Labs has been working with Rakuten for some time on the project, which was rumored last November, but it is coming out officially this evening, and co-founder Ernestine Fu said that working with Rakuten dovetails with users in Asia generally having a more progressive worldview of app distribution. Apps running on Blackstorm Labs’ technology are designed to boot instantly and have the same quality of a regular app without having to download large files.

“If you think about any new distribution platform you try to create, you need to have premiere amazing content on that platform,” Fu said. “The game studio to feed some initial content. But at some point we’ll open to additional developers.”

R Games is more of a “joint spinout,” with Blackstorm basically handling education and development of the technology and relaying that over to Rakuten. R Games already has dozens of people working on games that will be distributed through Blackstorm Labs’ HTML5 technology, and is tapping big brands like Taito to make games like Bubble Bobble and Pac-Man. The startup has one board seat in the venture.

Blackstorm Labs isn’t actually shipping any of its existing employees off to R Games, which would certainly not be a scalable situation if it were to seek additional partnerships and deals like these. But late last year, it became clear that the technology had a opportunity to create, at the very least, a thriving gaming ecosystem based around HTML5 technology, Fu said.

“We built within two days this quick bubble shooter game — it was not polished at all,” Fu said. “We were able to take that game and show it to the folks at Rakuten. It was all these things that were rough but it was one of those big moments that there are new distribution platforms. At the time HTML5 tech was so rapidly changing, Google and Apple were a part of that,”

Games still continues to be one of the strongest showcases of the technology, with the ability to quickly dive into a high-fidelity gaming experience that can tap into more social elements across different platforms like Facebook Messenger. But Blackstorm Labs’ technology can theoretically go beyond games, if developers are able to use that technology to figure out new use cases for applications that can quickly spin up and launch within a browser while having the same level of quality of a downloaded app.

If that’s the case — and that was one of the core elements of Blackstorm Labs’ pitch — then developers may be able to sidestep the cluttered App Store completely if it gets wide adoption. The actual applications could theoretically be embedded within links in your News Feed or messenger clients while still behaving like a typical app. Getting that technology widely adopted is still going to be an uphill battle, but part of the reason the company started off with games is that they have very high performance requirements.

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Sonos makes some of the best whole-home wireless audio gear I’ve used, bar none. I’ve tried Bluetooth and Zigbee models, wired and unwired gear, and nothing comes close to Sonos’ ease-of-use and reliability. It is, in short, the Jobs-era Apple of consumer audio – everything just works and if it doesn’t Sonos will have a fix eventually.

So it comes as no surprise that their latest product, the slab-like Playbase (or PLAYBASE, for the shouty) works as well as anything else they offer and can turn your living room into a surround-sound wonderland.

The Playbase is basically a stand for your standalone TV. The whole thing is 2.28 x 28.35 x 14.96 in. and can hold TVs up to 77 pounds. You still need to put both the Playbase and the TV on a table unless you dump it on the floor. However, it tries to meld into your AV cabinet seamlessly. This means you can drop a fairly large TV on top of this thing it will still work. The 10 internal speakers – six mid-range, three tweeters, and one woofer – ensure that you’re pumping a full range of audio out of the front grill and long, winding woofer channel.

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Like most soundbars the Playbase works best with movies and media. Connected to a Sonos SUB sub-woofer and a pair of satellites it makes for a superlative surround-sound system and, on its own, it can play almost any audio without flaw. This is not an audiophile’s system, to be clear. A Devialet Phantom will afford far more clarity at high volumes and reams of blog posts can be written about “better” home audio gear from more expensive dealers. However, for a fan of good audio it’s great. The setup is simple. The mobile app connects to almost every major streaming service, and TV and movies played through this slab are well-balanced. Plus, if you set things up in party mode you can rock the whole house with the Playbase as the main attraction.

Further, Sonos offers a service called Trueplay that tunes the speakers to your room using your phone. This usually adds a modicum of clarity to movie audio and improves music immensely, especially with surround-sound setups.

The Playbase costs $699 and with that you get precious little in the way of accessories. The kit includes an optical audio cable, a power cord, and an Ethernet cable. Setup is as simple as connecting your TV’s optical out to the Playbase. This obviously means you need a TV with optical out. In my setup I have a surround-sound receiver with no speakers attached that switches the various devices in my AV nook – PS4, Xbox, and cable box. This sends the HDMI to the TV and then out from the TV to the Playbase. This convoluted system works well enough although having a receiver and a Playbase is actually unnecessary as long as you have multiple inputs on your TV.

The best thing about Sonos is the mobile app. This app allows you to switch from playlists of Spotify music to streaming satellite radio to Pandora to your TV. You can set up a special night mode that reduces the sound of explosions in film and an audio enhancement mode that sufficiently improves dialogue so as no to require you to turn the whole system up to 11. Anyone on your wireless network can connect to the Sonos gear and select music and adding a Sub or satellite speakers is as easy as plugging them into a power outlet.

I love Sonos for its simplicity. Each device has only three inputs – power, optical-in, and Ethernet – and the setup is seamless. I’ve never lost a speaker accidentally, never suffered an outage, and except for some issues with playlist retention playback has been simple and seamless. While users with wall-mounted TVs definitely don’t need the Playbase folks with a free-standing television – a constituency that Sonos knows well – will love this addition to their living rooms. The Playbase comes in black and dirt-attracting white – I dirtied the white model with an errant, dusty thumbprint and you will too. However, we must all suffer for interior design.

In short the Playbase is another great product from one of the best home theatre companies on the market. It’s pricey, sure, but it works flawlessly and sounds great. Sonos has taken over the the mantle of bestaffordable home audio from folks like Sony, Bose, and Onkyo and it’s unlikely to give it up any time soon. The Playbase makes sure of that.

Chicken Kepsa at Mao Famaily Restaurant, Kalbadevi

On A hot afternoon, a dozen guests, busy digging into Mutton Kheema Pao and Hyderabadi Dum Biryani at Light Of Bharat, instantly gawk at the massive thaal that arrives at our table. A ‘wow’ escapes our lips as we check out its contents.

Plump, char-grilled pieces of Chicken Tikka and Malai Tikka, along with French fries, slices of onion, tomato and carrot, and half-boiled eggs, are propped on a bed of rice. Hidden below is a large portion of Tandoori Chicken. Reza Irani Saqi, third-generation owner of the 76-year-old Irani cafe that sits on a corner of Ranade Road in Dadar, introduces us to the dish, “This is Sultani Chicken Kepsa. It can easily feed 12 guests.”

Priced at Rs 1,280, it’s the latest addition to LOB’s menu, under a section called Arabic Special, sharing space with Chicken Tikka Kepsa, Chicken Malai Tikka and Egg Kepsa Biryani. “I added kepsa to the menu five years ago, after trying it in Dubai. In Mumbai, there are only five restaurants offering it,” says the 36-year-old, and he’s right. You will find kepsa at Persian Darbar, Lucky in Bandra, Afzal Restaurant in Mazagaon and Mao Family Restaurant’s branches in Kalbadevi and Andheri.

Yezdan Irani

Trace the origin
Kepsa gets its name from Kabsa, a traditional dish of Saudi Arabia, which is known as Mandi in Yemen, and Gouzi in the UAE. “They are variations of the biryani. In Hyderabadi biryani, meat is marinated and slow-cooked along with rice but here, both are flavoured and cooked separately. Traditionally, a vessel containing fragrant rice would be placed over coals in a hole dug into the earth. The Arabs would cover the rice with a jaali, place the marinated meat on top, and seal the hole until the dish was cooked, with juices from the meat seeping into the rice. And then you should see how they dig in!” laughs Saqi, directing us to do the same.

Sultani Chicken Kepsa at Light Of Bharat. Pics/Sneha Kharabe, Datta Kumbhar

Wok and toss
A fusion of flavours explodes in our mouth as the robust spices from Tandoori Chicken combine with the birista-laced rice. The tikkas lend a lovely, smoked taste. What’s distinct is the rice (with grains shorter than basmati), which tastes like fried rice sans the Chinese seasoning.

“That’s the Indian adaptation. We cook the rice in a wok because the portions need to be made fresh, as per the order. Earlier, I would flavour the rice with Bha-rat masala [it’s like garam masala], but Omani guests informed us that kepsa rice is lightly spiced. So, we avoid that,” says Saqi, who has priced the kepsas between Rs 260 and Rs 600 (half and full portions) and part of the earnings are donated to feed the underprivileged.

Reza Irani Saqi

Paneer in a kepsa
Each restaurant offers different varieties of kepsa. Persian Darbar’s menu includes King Prawns and Pomfret varieties, while Lucky sticks to Chicken and Mutton Kepsa.

But taking the dish to another level is the three-year-old Mao Family Restaurant, with 37 (!) varieties available at both the branches. These include regular Chicken and Mutton Kepsa, tweaked versions topped with seekh and cheese-laced laccha kebabs, Fish Schezwan Kepsa, Malwani Kepsa and vegetarian options like Paneer Tikka and Vegetarian Maqbooz Kepsa in a yellow gravy.

“In Mumbai, kepsa is essentially a fusion of Indian Chinese and Tandoor. At our restaurants, each variety has a different gravy and combination of spices,” shares 39-year-old owner Yezdan Irani, who comes armed with 10 years of experience in the hotel industry. He also owns the popular watering hole, Sunlight, located opposite the Kalbadevi branch of Mao, and is the management partner at Afzal Restaurant, which offers 15 kepsa varieties.

Keep a count
Irani reveals that over half a kilo of chicken goes into a full plate of kepsa. Priced between Rs 320 (half) and Rs 700 (full), 25 plates of kepsa are sold on an average, every day at Mao. He says, “We customise the proportion of rice and meat as per taste.

The idea is to offer a dish that is value-for-money, especially in SoBo, and which can be shared with a group of friends or family. One plate of kepsa is a full meal.”